Peter Kuran is a special effects technician, one of the best in the
business, but he's also long been fascinated by nuclear bombs. This
documentary on the history of America's nuclear tests, brilliantly
pieced together out of many sources, is a demonstration of that
fascination. Unfortunately, he takes no direct stand on the validity or
morality of nuclear testing, though the frequent citing of figures does
add its own kind of wry commentary. Did the U.S. really need to do
1,054 nuclear weapons tests?

Editing as well as directing, Kuran uses material from training films,
other documentaries (incluing "Triumph of the Will"), military footage
and other sources. Furthermore, he had access to footage not previously
available to the public (though there's nothing in the movie indicating
just which footage this was). He also shot some original footage of
some of the test sites, including the very first, Trinity, as they look
today. Stills, sometimes enhanced by special effects, are used
throughout, and there are some CGI shots when footage wasn't available.

William Shatner narrates in a sober, compelling manner, while older
footage is narrated by effects expert Randall William Cook in an
appropriate "newsreel" voice. Kuran interviewed nuclear weapons expert
Frank H. Shelton -- as well as Edward Teller himself, the "father of
the hydrogen bomb," and always one of the most fervent supporters of
the concept of nuclear deterrence.

Kuran's focus, however, is not on the ethics of the nuclear standoff,
but on the history of America's nuclear tests. His film includes some
surprising scenes, such as a ton of TNT being carefully (if unnervingly
vigorously) stacked up to explode, to provide a means of describing
subsequent nuclear explosions. (Kilotons of TNT, later megatons.)
There's color footage of the Enola Gay being loaded with "Little Boy"
and "Fat Man" -- the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs; there's even
footage that seems to be the explosion over Hiroshima.

Immediately after World War II, the United States continued testing
nuclear weapons, and did so regularly for the next twenty years. Though
the narration (written by Scott Narrie and Don Pugsley) never
emphasizes this, we see for ourselves how irresponsible and unnecessary
much of this testing was. Slipped in almost casually is the point that
many of the tests weren't of the bombs as weapons, but to find out how
to build better bomb shelters: nuclear war seemed that inevitable. The
concept of fallout seems to have been overlooked by the nuclear testers
(except Oppenheimer, who's barely mentioned); the severe radiation
resulting from the 1946 tests at Eniwetok and Bikini in the Pacific was
unexpected.

Kuran seems to be in love with the catastrophic beauty of nuclear
explosions, and includes dozens of mushroom clouds, in black and white
and color, which never seem repetitious, but sometimes lose their power
to stun. However, he also includes shocking, uncomfortable scenes --
still powerful after all these years -- of test buildings being first
incinerated and then demolished by the flash and shock waves of the
bombs. There's an astonishing scene of a tall pine tree in the
distance: its needles are blown away so swiftly that for an instant,
they retain the shape of the tree.
It's never made clear whether the sounds of the explosions are the real
thing, or recreated, although the fact that there is a brief separate
segment of a bomb explosion with "actual sound delay" suggests that, as
they used to say, things have been "technically augmented." Some of
these explosions will really test the parameters of your subwoofers,
and if you crank the system all the way up, perhaps test the structural
integrity of your house.

The score by William T. Stromberg is, appropriately enough, bombastic
and florid, but perfectly suited to these apocalyptic images. You have
the option of watching the film with the score alone.

The film is intelligent and sophisticated and, considering the subject
matter, understated. But it's also flawed in that it really comes down
to a history of explosions, not of nuclear testing itself, or what it
was designed to accomplish. (Often, we aren't told the results of the
tests.) He slips from "atomic" to "thermonuclear" without making the
distinction clear, and skips completely over the worldwide protests
against testing that increased throughout the 1950s. (He doesn't even
include that famous photo of Bertrand Russell.)

A moral stance was probably not necessary, but the fact that other
people did take such a stance, and that these protests were
instrumental in ending the U.S. nuclear tests, should have been
mentioned. As it is, the engrossing "Trinity and Beyond" is slightly
hollow at the heart: the beauty and destructive power of the nuclear
tests is obvious. Why they were irresponsible is not.

more details

sound format:

5.1 surround

special features:

Includes director commentary, isolated music track, notes, stills, and a separate short in 3-D.